Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.

Authors Note #1: This is a response to a prompt posted on the LJ community "Beware of Walkers." The prompt was: "The thoughts going through Jacqui's head in the last 20 seconds before the CDC blew up."

The Human Element

Twenty seconds…

She'd always paid homage to the idea of time. She liked the carefully measured monotony of the passing hours, the predicable click of the minutes, and the fast paced tick of the seconds. Love it or hate it, it was a foundation that never faltered. Time was reliable, concise, and permanent. ...Or so she'd thought.

The past few months had taught her different.

Because without all those things, all the filler, all the tasks and chores that permeate ones daily life, time itself eventually loses its meaning. At first she'd carried on like nothing had happened. But soon enough she'd found herself measuring the hours not by the hands of the watch still strapped around her wrist, but by the brightness of the sun that hung high above the distant Georgian skyline.

After all, who needed to mark the passing hours anymore? Now that everything that had been made to measure it had been rendered useless? Rendered impotent, pointless and dead?

She supposed that was what she'd missed the most, the meaning of time. She missed being able to look down at her watch and measure the hours. Whether it was in anticipation for the days end, the weekend, or even for her weekly yoga session at the gym, she'd always treasured the steady rhythm of time.

And perhaps that was why when she finally faced the clock; she realized that a strange sort of calm had settled over her. The feeling spreading through her in much the same way as thick, southern-made molasses drips slowly from the jar, comforting and cloyingly sweet as it rolls across the tongue.

How appropriately ironic was it that it was only now, at the end of all things, that the meaning would return? She didn't care to calculate the percentages or the probabilities of it, she was just grateful that it'd returned at all. …That the meaning and purpose to life, to her life, had finally come rushing back.

She figured it might sound foolish, maybe even pathetic depending on the way you looked at it. But it was something she could claim as her own, a central, intrinsically important part of herself that had been inexplicably returned. Bringing her back a shred of herself that she'd figured she'd lost forever.

And it was here, as the clock continued to tick away the moments, that she couldn't help but look back and rewind. Mind racing through all the fears, horrors, and uncertainties that had taken up residence in the forefront of her mind ever since the world she'd known had been brutally ripped away.

This world was a macabre fake, an impostor that had enveloped the shattered, remnants of what had existed before in a suffocating mass of confusion, brutality, and evil. It had made a mockery out of the world they'd known. Turning people against one another in the most vicious and terrifying ways. Ripping morality and civility into bloody shreds as the entire world had simply sat and watched. Refusing to believe it until it was running down their street, racing through their backyards, and breaking through their front windows.

In those first few weeks she remembered how no one had really been able to put a name to it. There had simply just been no explanation that could accurately sum up the reality of what they were facing into one, neat, easily deliverable package.

There had been too many questions and not nearly enough answers. What was it? Who were they? Who had they once been? Could they get better? What had caused this? Was their a cure? How long would it last? Where were the government and the military? How had it gotten this far? Who was in charge? Where could people go to be safe? What was a walker? - And like a sugar pill for the masses, those rising, cacophonous questions had remained largely unanswered.

And while she didn't know the answer to most of those questions, she did know what it looked like. What a hundred million deaths looked like. It was stuck in her head like an itch she couldn't scratch. She herself couldn't even begin to describe it; there were no words. No quick one liners or succinct phrases that could do the reality of it justice. …But she did know how she saw it.

She supposed that at some point her brain had just compartmentalized everything. So in reality it all came down to a single memory. It was badly lit, flickering in and out of focus like a half broken reel of film, something left tattered and forgotten in the panic of confusion of those first few days. But when it played out, well, you couldn't miss it.

She'd just come out of the grocer. Hyper aware of the high pitched click of her heels as she'd walked towards her car, melding oddly with the weight of the bizarre silence that seemed to have overtaken the city of late. And she remembered how the feeling had unnerved her far more than she'd been willing to admit.

She remembered how she'd heard them long before she'd seen them. With their footfalls sounding uneven, irregular and wrong even from the distance as a chorus of harsh, grating roars pierced through the stillness with all the subtly of a set of nails raking down a chalkboard.

But even then, she'd still jumped when they'd rounded the corner not five feet from her, exploding out from the alleyway in the flurry of blurred faces and staggered movements. …Only it wasn't what they were saying on the TV, where the news people were going on about looters, rioters, and the sick. It was a family.

The man had been long limbed and gangling, sporting a thatch of wild, strawberry-blond hair that'd been plastered to his head with sweat and blood. He was running but his steps were hindered, made awkward and slow by the woman he dragged at his side. - She would have been a pretty little wisp of a thing, with her full cheeks and curly auburn hair. Only for some reason her freckled skin had turned deathly pale and her long, arcing throat had been marred, now a gnarled mess of torn flesh and blood smeared skin.

But despite it all, she'd still stumbled forward. Her hand wrapped firmly in his own as she leaned into his embrace. Almost as if regardless of her hurts, regardless of how ill she might have been, even she knew that there was something far worse trailing just behind them. - Their wide eyed little boy riding high and safe in his father's arms. Clutching tight at his collar as his large, uncomprehending eyes stared out at the world in terror. Peering out, vacant and stunned from the curve of his father's neck as the man tightened his hold. Murmuring to him breathlessly as the child let out a weak, wordless little sob as they'd hurried past.

She remembered calling out, her hand flying to her mouth in horror as she'd taken in the swaths of smudged crimson that had been caked across their skin and clothes. Streaming down from open wounds and blotched up skid marks of dirt and gore until it seemed as though they'd been swiped at random - arced across their clothes like careless brush strokes that had unexpectedly melded with sweat soaked skin.

But the only response she'd gotten was a glimpse of the terrified whites of the man's eyes as they'd staggered past. His mouth moving soundlessly as he turned towards her, lips forming words that never quite seemed to make it past the bloody smudge of his lips before they'd rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

She hadn't understood then. No one had.

That was how she saw it, this entire horrendous…thing. She didn't see it as a virus, or a disease. It wasn't that simple. It couldn't be neatly labelled or accurately defined. It wasn't meant to be easily recorded and swiftly swept under the rug, something that the government or even the military could suppress or quietly make disappear.

Because ironically enough, this wasn't about the dead, it was about the living. And at the end of the day that was all she could see. …The people. ...The human element.

This was a tragedy of the people. And she just couldn't do it anymore. She couldn't live in a world where cold brutality and callous disregard for everything she'd once held dear reined in the stead of morality and mercy. She wasn't meant for it and she knew it.

So when the dying echoes of that last second finally ticked past. And Jenner's hand had tightened around hers; she couldn't help but weep - her tears not of grief or fear, but of gratitude.

A/N: Please let me know what you think? Reviews and constructive critiquing are love!

"Time is what we want most, but... what we use worst." - William Penn.